


Help, English-

by belgiankpopper



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, I still can't tag but enjoy, I try to be funny okay, M/M, Minho doesn't know the transfer student's name but damn he's hot-, They're supposed to be studying, Tutor Seungmin, hyunjin and felix are mentioned, minho isn't that bad at english i swear, some chats at the end of the story, transfer student Chan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28487031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belgiankpopper/pseuds/belgiankpopper
Summary: “Why can’t we have more original conversations? Like, I don’t know,” Minho pondered for a minute, looking around the study area. He caught a glimpse of a person entering the gigantic room, his face lighting up when he found an idea. The younger cocked his eyebrow. “Let’s talk about…” Minho dragged out, making Seungmin’s eyes roll.“Let’s talk about... boys,”Seungmin and Minho are practicing some (boring, courtesy of Minho) English dialogues, when the hot transfer student Chan joins them in the study area. Both not knowing the boy's name, nor knowing that he can speak English, Minho starts a dialogue about how hot said student is and well, guess the rest.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 33
Kudos: 278
Collections: october☆sparkle: minchan ficfest





	Help, English-

**Author's Note:**

> This was for Prompt #04! :  
> Minho was practising his English speaking skills with Seungmin, bored with their school textbook dialogues Minho started talking about the hot transfer student in his class, Chan, he just didn't know Chan was actually transferred from Australia and not just another Korean school and that Chan was sitting behind him listening - and understanding - it all
> 
> English dialogues are all in italics! If it’s written normally, and there are italics, I’m emphasising the word~ if the whole sentence is in italics except for one word or two, it means that Minho most probably didn’t know the word in English and had to ask; or else I'll precise! If the whole sentence is in italics, I emphasize by underlining the word. I hope that kind of makes sense?
> 
> TO THE PROMPTER:  
> I hope I made your prompt justice! I found this so much fun to write!
> 
> Enjoy reading :3 constructive criticism is always welcome!

_“Hi, my name is Seungmin”_ , the younger started. 

_“My name is Minho, nice to meet you. How are you?”_ Minho answered, albeit uninterested.

The boys were sitting at one of the tables by the window in their university’s study room. It was a gigantic room, connected to their library, where students could revise in peace. The area where Minho and Seungmin were seated was an area where students could talk, would it be about group work or anything of the sort. Multiple tables were set around the area, but it was a calm afternoon, so there weren’t many students.

_“Nice to meet you too. I’m good, thank you. How are you?”_

_“I’m good, thank you.”_

“Good! Now we _finally_ have this one down, onto the next one!” Seungmin tried to liven up the mood, then proceeded to mutter under his breath, “After so long wanting to avoid it when it’s the _easiest_ one.” 

The elder shot him a glare with thunderous eyes. Seungmin raised his hands up in defence. 

“Look, it was your mistake to fail that one English test and also, _you_ asked _me_ for help, I could let you deal with it on your own.” Minho rolled his eyes but sighed in defeat. Seungmin _did_ have a point. “Okay okay, yeah, thank you for helping me.” 

But Minho really wasn’t having it. Why was this vocabulary so boring? 

“Wanna go further to the one with the directions?” Seungmin asked the older. 

“Sure.” He still sounded very uninterested, but kept going. They did need to study, for god’s sake. 

Seungmin pulled out the map in his textbook, placing it between him and Minho. _“Hi, I’ve lost my way, could you help me out?”_

_“Of course, where do you need to go?”_

Seungmin looks at the map, choosing out a place he needs to go to. _“I need to go to this restaurant.”_

Minho looked at Seungmin with utter disbelief. Seungmin did not just use the word he has most difficulties with- “Oh, you devil.” 

“Come on, oldy, continue”, Seungmin answered with a grin. 

Minho groaned in frustration, but continued anyway. He needed to be able to pronounce this word some day, and be able to use it. If he was going to travel, his English needed to be of some decent level so he could get to know his way around.

_“To go to the_ restaurant _”_ , translating the last word to Korean (resulting in Seungmin rolling his eyes at him), _“you need to take the first street on your left, follow the street until the roundabout, take the second exit, and it’s a bit further on your right.”_ Minho’s sly smile lingered after he finished his sentence. Seungmin let him off the hook for now, though. 

_“Thank you, so first on the left, second exit of the roundabout and then first street on the right and it’s there?”_

“Seungmiiiiiiin _”,_ the older whined. 

“Minho-hyuuuuung”, Seungmin responded in the same tone. 

Argh. So Seungmin wants to play _this_ game. _“No, let me r-repeat. You take the first street on the left, take the second exit at the roundabout and it’s a bit further, on your right_.” Minho accentuated the last part. 

_“Ah, okay, thank you very much!”_ Seungmin answered.

Minho stretched his body out, meeting Seungmin’s awaiting, but lowkey annoyed, gaze. “What?” 

Seungmin’s head gave an upwards nod towards the dialogue in the book. 

“Okay okay, _you’re welcome, sir. Have a great day_ ,” Minho finished the dialogue, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. 

“What is your problem with this vocabulary, Hyung, like for real?” Seungmin asked.

“It’s just so boooooring,” Minho whined. “Why is this the vocabulary we’re seeing? It's been the same for years.” 

“Then how come you still failed it?” 

“Because it’s so boring that I stopped studying it. No prof makes it interesting either.” 

Seungmin nodded his head at that. “That’s true. But these are the basics, if you fail these you won’t be able to do other ones.” 

It’s not like Minho _wanted_ to study the vocabulary, but Seungmin was right. If he didn’t study properly, he wouldn’t be able to even have the basics. It wasn’t that Minho was _that_ bad at English, he really just had gotten bored of the vocabulary they were seeing, so he stopped studying.

  
  


“Why can’t we have more original conversations? Like, I don’t know,” Minho pondered for a minute, looking around the study area. He caught a glimpse of a person entering the gigantic room, his face lighting up when he found an idea. The younger cocked his eyebrow. “Let’s talk about…” Minho dragged out, making Seungmin’s eyes roll. “Let’s talk about... _boys_ ,” Minho decided, finishing the sentence with the English translation, with the sneakiest grin on his face since the beginning of the afternoon.

“Don’t you always talk about boys anyways?” Seungmin answered in a monotone voice. It really wasn’t unusual for Minho to talk about boys for hours on an end.

“Well, yeah, it’s fun. For sure when talking about good-looking ones,” Minho answered, his eyebrows raising in a suggestive manner.

Seungmin rolled his eyes but thought he could give it a shot. “As long as every question you ask is in English.” 

Minho nodded, reluctantly. “Okay, deal.”

Seungmin grinned and continued in English, _“But so, yeah, yeah, we know you’re gay; no need to even talk about boys for ages to know that. You do know you should be studying instead of staring at them for hours, right?”_

Minho huffed, _“But studying is boring! Staring at boys is much more- euh…”_ Minho pondered a second. “Enjoyable _?”_

“ _Enjoyable_ would seem like the correct term in this case,” Seungmin translated for him. 

_“Yes! It is much more enjoyable!”_ Minho answered, mouth curling around the syllables oddly.

Seungmin smiled. At least it would get the other somewhere, he guessed. The younger continued in English, leaning backwards and crossing his arms over his chest. _“Then, is there any boy you want to talk about? Who is your latest crush?”_

“ _The- euh-_ I forgot the term?” Minho turned his head to the right to look at someone, the younger following his gaze. Minho’s eyes were focused on the table next to them, but far enough to not immediately be able to hear them.

Seungmin could swear he had seen the guy somewhere before, but couldn’t remember from where. _“The guy over there?”_

_“The guy over there?? He’s the new-_ I really don’t know the term, he’s the transfer student?” Minho asked, the volume of his voice dropping down when switching to Korean. 

_“The transfer student?”_

“Oh! Yes, _the transfer student”_ , Minho repeated. 

_“How did you even know who he is?”_

_“Oh I know everything at this school, always.”_

“You could just say _‘I know everything_ ’, actually”, Seungmin corrected him.

“Yeah yeah yeah, okay, _Mr. Kim_.” 

The transfer student in question had entered the room not too long before that and had seated himself at the table further from the two boys. He was far enough that he wouldn’t hear them immediately, but Minho would not dare to raise his voice too loud. He had seen the boy previously at Hyunjin’s swimming training, both boys being in the swim team. And _boy_ , he looked _good._ Both with clothes and in just a swim trunk. Well he looked good in general. Minho had seen him walk around multiple times around campus and might have developed a tiny crush on said student. Just a tiny one. And had never spoken to said boy in person. 

_“Do you know his name then, mister know-it-all?”_ Seungmin retorted. 

Minho looked at him confused. _“What does mister know-it-all mean?”_

“It’s a kind of term to say that someone always knows everything but is usually wrong and just makes people think they know everything,” the younger answered, his nose back in his own English book.

“Oh, that makes- ya!” Minho replied, offended. Seungmin just shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway- _”_

“ _Anyway_ ”, Seungmin translated, interrupting him.

Minho rolled his eyes. “ _Anyway_ ,” Minho continued, accentuating the word, _“no, I don’t know his name but I know that he is so good-looking!!”_

_“I guess”_ , Seungmin answered, shrugging his shoulders.

_“You guess??? That guy has such broad shoulders! And he even has a- euh,,,_ six-pack?” 

Seungmin felt like this conversation was going to go downhill, but replied anyway. “ _A six-pack_ ”, the younger translated.

_“That! And-”_

“At least repeat the word after me hyung, you’re not going to learn if you don’t!”

Minho sighed. “ _He even has a six-pack_. Happy now?”

“Not really but continue.” 

Minho grinned. _“He looks so cute when he wears a euh- hoodie?”_

Seungmin nodded, the word being correct. “It’s the same as in Korean, yes.” 

_“Oh okay, so he looks very cute in hoodie.”_

“ _In_ _a_ _hoodie, hyung_.” 

_“In_ _a hoodie_ _, sorry, sorry. But he look very cool in a_ leather jacket _.”_

_“He_ _looks_ _very_ _cool_ _in a_ _leather jacket_ ”, Seungmin corrected him and continued in Korean; “Third person singular in the present tense takes ’s’, hyung.”

“Yes yes, _professor Kim_ ”, the older responded in a mocking tone. Seungmin raised an eyebrow, which Minho ignored and continued. 

_“So, he looks very_ _cool_ _in_ _leather jackets_ _. And then his hair?? Always styled perfectly, but like he- euh-_ either _?”_

Seungmin sighed, scared for the rest of the sentence, but still replied. “ _Either_.” 

_“Oh yeah! He either looks very cute, with his beanie on or when his hair is wet after swimming in the pool-”_

_“How did you even see him swim at the pool? Wait don’t answer I don’t even want to know-”_

_“He is in the swim team with Jinnie~”_ Minho’s eyebrows wiggling knowingly.

Seungmin’s ears became red, but his face stayed composed; “I said that I _didn’t_ want to know-”

_“Sure, but back to Mr. Transfer Student. I- euh.. How do you say:_ I would just do him without a single problem-”

The younger really should have seen that one coming, but he forgot how straightforward the older could be.

“I am NOT translating that”, Seungmin answered, a disgusted look on his face. “Cool is said as _‘cool’_ though. I can tell you that.”

“Seungminnnnnn! _Please?_ ” Minho pleaded, a pout on his lips.

“ _Oh hell no._ I already have to listen to your nightly escapades enough, I am _not_ translating that.” 

Minho pouted some more, but knew he could do nothing to persuade the younger. “ _Okay okay.”_

“And we’re definitely not going to talk about those in our English study sessions. Please spare me.” 

Minho slumped. “But I can tell you that Jinnie looked good with his long hair wet-”

“By the way,” Seungmin interrupted, a soft tint of red spreading onto his cheeks, “wasn’t there a specific thing you had to focus on? Didn’t you fail that last test about tenses as well?” 

Both did not notice someone getting up from their seat beside them, slowly walking towards them.

“Oh yeah, the teacher did say I needed help with those; I really never see the difference or just when I have to use a certain tense or anything.” 

Another voice beside them spoke up.

_“I could help you with those”_ , the voice said.

Seungmin and Minho’s heads turned towards the voice, both freezing in their seet. The transfer student Minho had been talking about was standing right there, next to their table, looking at Minho expectantly, the point of his ears red. His brown hair was down, a beanie pulled over his head. The added comfortable-looking hoodie and sweatpants made him look pretty soft. As much as Minho tried to keep a poker face, his cheeks reddened. 

_“The name’s Chan, by the way. Not just_ transfer student _.”_

Seungmin’s eyes widened upon realization. “You’re Felix’s _Aussie mate_! The one he speaks English with!”, switching to Korean.

“Oh, yeah! Felix and I knew each other back in Sydney. He helped me adjust to university; I helped him with his Korean back when we were both still in Australia.” Chan answered.

Minho’s cheeks were now as red as a tomato. The guy he had been talking about for the past 10 minutes understood both Korean and English and just heard about how he low-key had checked him out at his own swimming pool training and apparently Seungmin knew- Wait.

“Seungmin, you knew that he spoke English?” Minho asked, incredulous. 

“In my defence, I forgot! I knew I knew him from somewhere, I just didn’t remember from where! I saw Felix talking to him and asked who he was later on. Felix then told me he’s an old friend from Sydney who arrived at our uni recently. He also told me how Chan-” Seungmin looked at the latter with a questioning face.

“You can call me hyung”, Chan filled in for him. 

“Ah, thank you” Seungming responded and continued; “He also told me how Chan-hyung helped him with his Korean back in Australia before he arrived here. I had just completely forgotten about the interaction because I saw hyung from afar.” 

“Oh so the Chan-hyung Felix talked about is you..” Minho answered, his voice going silent at the end of the sentence. What a small world, Minho thought.

“Yeah, apparently that’s me, yes”, Chan snickered. 

“And so you’re a perfect bilingual, Korean-English?” Minho asked the older.

“I am indeed.” 

Seungmin lifted himself out of his seat, grabbing the two older ones’ attention, both looking at him confused.

Seungmin just grinned. “I think my job as an English tutor is done here, I think Chan-hyung can perfectly take over for me, right, hyung? I’m not that good at explaining tenses anyway.” 

Minho squinted his eyes at the younger. “Kim Seungmin, don’t you dare-”

“Bye hyungs! Good luck, Chan-hyung!” He turned around, his backpack on his back and books in his arms, hopping towards the exit of the study area. Minho stood up out of his chair. “YA KIM SEUNGMIN!”

Minho glared at the younger until he had left the room. Minho would get back at him, one way or another. He might just give Jinnie Seungmin’s number. He’ll see. For now, he had to focus on the hot transfer student who apparently speaks perfectly both English and Korean and who just proposed to be Minho’s English tutor.

Minho looked at Chan and Chan back at Minho, an awkward silence settling between them, when Chan spoke up, continuing the Korean conversation.

“Can I sit here?” he queried, indicating to the now-empty seat across Minho. 

Minho stammered out an “of- of course” before Chan took his stuff and sat down in front of the boy.

“Do you have your test with you so we can look it over?” Chan asked.

“I don’t…”

Chan grinned. “That means we need another study date so we can go over that one.” Minho’s face was just burning about now. “We can just go over the tenses now? Do you have a part in your book about it?” Minho nodded, not trusting his voice. He took his book, opened it at the page where he had revision about the tenses and scooted closer to Chan so they could look at it together. 

_“Oh and by the way,”_ Chan started, Minho looking up at him, _“thanks for the compliments. Didn’t know I looked that good in leather jackets.”_ Minho dropped his eyes immediately back at his book, both his face and ears red. Chan just laughed. 

\--

**AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE**

**Chrispy:**

Lix, mate! You could have told me you knew the cute guy that I saw at the swimming pool?

(4:50pm)

**Lixiepixie:**

Wait, wdym?

(4:51pm)

**Chrispy:**

Apparently you know Minho?

(4:51pm)

**Lixiepixie:**

Oh, Minho-hyung? Yeah! He’s a dance major just like me

WAIT HE WAS THE GUY YOU WERE RAMBLING ABOUT FOR AN HOUR STRAIGHT?

(4:51pm)

**Chrispy:**

For an hour gay, thankyouverymuch

And not an hour-

(4:52pm)

**Lixiepixie:**

Oh it was _at least_ an hour, dude

You couldn’t shut up about the cute guy with the damn _thighs_

Puh-lease.

(4:52pm)

**Chrispy:**

Anyway!

I

Got

His number

And

A

Dateeeeeee

(4:53pm)

**Lixiepixie:**

No.

WAY.

Go get em tiger???

(4:53pm)

**Chrispy:**

Definitely~ 

(4:53pm)

\---

**Dog and Cat (2)**

**Annoying Minho-hyung:**

Guess who got the cute transfer student’s number and a study date?

(4:45pm)

Meee~

(4:45pm)

Ya! Give me attention!!

(4:53pm)

**Annoying Minnie:**

_Read at 4:53pm_

\--

**New Chat (2)**

**Unknown number:**

Hi, is this Seungmin’s number? As in Kim Seungmin?

(5:15pm)

**Seungminnie:**

Depends, who are you?

(5:16pm)

**Unknown number:**

It’s Hyunjin, Hwang Hyunjin! From your photography class? 

Minho-hyung gave me your phone number!

(5:16pm)

**Seungminnie:**

Oh! Hi Hyunjin! Yeah, it’s Seungmin!

Give me just a minute

(5:17pm)

**Hyunjinnie:**

Okay?

(5:17pm)

\--

**Dog and Cat (2)**

**Annoying Minnie:**

MINHO-HYUNG COME RIGHT BACK HERE

(5:17pm)

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm the one who wrote this buddy! :3 I had a lot of fun writing for this fest and I'm really proud of the end result!
> 
> scream at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/belgiankpopper) or on [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/belgiankpopper) if you feel like it! :3


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